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30 Years For Online Pharmacy Spammer
jotter507 writes "So, you get arrested for running an illegal online pharmacy and the judge orders you to stop selling medication over the Internet. Don't sit around and do nothing before the trial! Run off to the Dominican Republic on a false passport, withdraw money from an account ordered frozen, and start up another online 'pharmacy.' It didn't end well for 27-year old Christopher William Smith, also known as 'Rizler.' The world-reviled spammer and Internet drug dispenser received a 30-year sentence from a federal judge on Wednesday."
In other words...good riddance scumbag.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sounds like a perfectly good buisness model to me! Wonder what could go wrong...
If this guy's getting 30 years, then whoever's behind the "United States National Medical Association" deserves the death penalty. I've never seen so much spam for one target site as I have for US-NMA, and what puzzles me is that the spam continues even though the domain has been parked at an error page for at least a week now. It's almost as if they no longer care about selling fake pills, they just want to annoy the hell out of everyone...
Oh well, kudos to those involved for putting another spammer away. Keep up the good work.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
And for once, the system works like we all want it to.
I would guess that a large part of that 30 years is due to his behaviour after being charged, breaking court orders often carries a greater sentence than the original crime IIRC.
It seems the spammer did everything in his power to maximize his jail sentence. Not only did he defy the judge at every opportunity, but he also threatened to kill a witness's children if she testified. He probably could have gotten away with serious fines if he had only cooperated, but instead he's probably going to lose not just his 10+ Automobiles, but also as many of his millions of dollars as the government can find.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
30 years is tough. He is probably really anxious and stressed, I suggest he take some x.a@x!
As I understand it, there is no parole and time off for good behavior. This is good... very good.
Still... I wake up almost every morning hoping to see a headline about "spammer brutally murdered in his mansion." Yes, I'm sure I'm not the only one who hopes for such headlines, but my imagination goes further... I want to see something in the story stating that the cause of death was from being buried under the weight of several thousand cans of canned-meat [by-]products.
I'm sure there are more creative ideas than this, but I think the world would generally approve of this means of waste disposal.
The "interstate commerce" clause applies, to wit: stopping fraud across state lines, perpetrated in the guise of business.
Was this guy ACTUALLY selling medicine, and that in good faith? or was he running a scam?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Damn right, if someone wants to ruin the internet, run drugs and threaten to kill people HOW DARE ANYONE STOP THEM.
Oh libertarianism... What will you justify next!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
It figures. I ran out of mod points yesterday so instead, I'll respond to the troll.
It's not about the government telling someone what business they can or cannot run, it's about this person selling pills which are claimed to be the real thing. In other words, he was selling placebos and not telling people these weren't the real thing.
Further, Congress has delegated authority to regulate medicinces to the FDA since medicines are not state specific. You can find the same bottle of Advil in Georgia as you can in Kansas. The FDA has stated that if it's a medicine, it must undergo rigorous testing to prove its relative safety.
This guy was claiming he had real drugs which he could deliver on the cheap. Not only was he violating FDA guidelines, he was perpetrating fraud.
So tell me, what country do you live in that allows someone to perpetrate fraud and not get penalized?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Get your "ism"s straight.
Libertarianism would certainly not tolerate this guy, as he was running a scam, committed what any sane person would consider real crimes, and solicited murder - exactly the kind of thing Libertarians DO want a government around to deal with, and deal with harshly & efficiently.
The word you're looking for is Anarchism - where everything he did would be legal precisely because absolutely nothing would be illegal, and that because there would be no government to declare anything illegal.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Sentencing guidelines. The PROSECUTOR not the JUDGE makes the ultimate decision of what charges to bring and the Judge has to apply the guidelines and explain if the Judge deviates from the guidelines (upward or downward).
.50 sniper rifle from his living room - just to see how far the bullet goes? GUESS WHAT - we have to have laws!).
FWIW, this guy is much more than a spammer and 30 years is far from a reasonable sentence. 300 years for conspiracy to murder the child of an adverse witness is a fair term FOR THAT ONE CRIME.
A Cage is where we put people too dangerous to be a part of society. (IMHO, that includes you loonies who think business and people should have unfettered power - s**t what happens when your "unfettered" business starts feeding us CO-treated bad meat or your drunken neighbor decides to fire his
How was the perp able to withdraw money from a frozen account?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Still excessive in my opinion. American sentences boggle one's mind... After Stalin's death the maximum sentence in USSR was reduced from 25 years to 15 — although many crimes were still punishable by death (as they are here) and one also got to spend their days in much harsher conditions than in the US.
The main difference here is that in the US sentences are added up upon one another, whereas in most of the rest of the world they run concurrently. It could be argued, that American system continues to deter criminals after their first crime, while the other system makes the subsequent crimes "free". On the other hand, once a crook has accumulated enough years in US, their subsequent crimes are also free, because any sentence will be, in effect, a life one. With a considerable sentencing leeway given to judges, in neither system do the subsequent crimes need to be "free".
Increasing the harshness of the punishment hardens the criminals and makes them more likely to escalate violence. There is a well known historical precedent from medieval Europe, where a local baron instituted death penalty for highway robbers. Having nothing more to risk, the robbers started killing their victims instead of simply robbing them...
What works best is the inevitability of punishment, rather then the harshness of it. 25% of the spammers receiving a 1 year sentence would deter more scumbags, than 2 of them (a fraction of a percent) getting publicly chopped up on a wheel.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Last time a spammer got sent to jail, someone had the great idea of sending all the viagra and cialis they'd been selling to thier cellmates. We need to get a cellmate's name and address once he's put in, I'd be willing to visit an online pharamcy and order some as a gift package : )
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
...he'll end up in prison with men who've enlarged their dicks with v1agra and are looking for HOT SEX NOW
There's a reason people post "print" link to articles instead of to the ad-laden one, and it's the publishers' faults.
It's because for years now, we the consumers have been so abused with web publishers pushing ads on us that we immediately jump to defend ourselves against them, whether it's justified or not. If Internet publishers had been reasonable all these years and given us an ad or two with our content, it wouldn't be a problem, and I seriously doubt there would be such a backlash against ads nowadays.
But that's not what happened. Once a few publishers found out that they could make some money with ads, they figured they could make even more money with ads. So then we had pop-ups, pop-unders, animated bouncy ads, flash gizmos, interstitials, etc.
And as a direct result of that, now we have AdBlock plus and links to the print version of articles, and publishers are making less money from ads because of their collective greed and abuse. Unfortunately, sites such as the Star Tribune, which actually doesn't have many ads, have to suffer as well because of the sins of their industry. It may not be right, and it may not be fair, but it's just the mode we all necessarily have to operate in today.
For what it's worth, though, here is the ad-laden link to the article if you want give it some eyeballs. One good thing about it: If you follow it instead of the link to the print version, you get to see what this son of a bitch looks like.
u-bend
now I am going to be stuck footing the bill for 30 years of keeping this worthless piece of crap alive in a prison where bleeding heart pansies have demanded that criminals be treated better than the average citizen. So he will have cable, a gym, free food, a place to sleep, etc...I'm sure plenty of homeless would kill for that (and probably have because we have set up such a sweet deal for them). For all your "prison is a rough place" people...I imagine living on the street, not eating, and frequently being beaten or killed by moron teens for sport, or maybe mauled for insurance fraud reasons, is probably a bit worse.
Prison isn't fun. A friend of mine spend 2 in a Canadian prison for sellign pot and turned his life around because he never wants to go back. This is a massively built black guy who would never have to worry about beingont he receiving end of prison rape.
The whole "but homeless people would kill to be there" is a fallacy too. Life on the streets is rough but you still have some freedoms to massage your vices or turn it around. In America/Canada you still can eat regularly as well and you pan handle enough to get some booze or food fairly easily. How often do you hear in hedlines that a homeless person comitted a crime to go to prison. I have never heard of this. I live in one of the coldest cities in NA. I'm sure it happens in some places but the arguementis a fallacy because our prisons here and there aren't filled with homeless. Their filled with drug dealers. Check the stats.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Michael Bolton: We get caught laundering money, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to federal POUND ME IN THE ASS prison.
The guy wasn't "just" a spammer. He ran an online pharmacy, and his assistant (whose children he tried to have killed) was responsible for procuring Vicodin for him to sell.
He was a fraud, a fugitive, and a would-be killer. He was also apparently willing to sell your teenage daughter real narcotics, and did so often enough that the gov't sold 1.6 million dollars worth of his cars at auction. Sorry, I can't drum up a lot of sympathy for him.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You are suggesting a 300 year sentence? wow, how long do people live in your place?
My understanding is that in the USA, sentences can be put back to back, is that true? so if you did ten things that were worth a ten year sentence you'd get a hundred years?
If so, what's the point of issuing sentences over 75 years or so? why not just say "until you're dead, no remission"? Genuine question rather than flamebait, can anybody enlighten me to the legal thought behind what seems a bit silly on the surface. As somebody else has said, it seems a case of being hung for a sheep instead of a lamb - if you're gonig to be in prison for all your life, then you might as well commit loads more crimes. If you're gonig to jail for 100 years, then there is no incentive for soembody not to commit more crimes, surely?
Article I, section 8: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
I'll be the first one to admit that this clause has been abused, but if this constitutes abuse, it's at least much closer to the original intent than many other applications of the ICC.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This guy was scum, no question about it. And yet the ironic thing about it is that he may have really helped many people in need. Many people are suffering from severe pain, and yet are unable to legally obtain the relief which should be readily available to them. One hand, you could say that he overcharged such people and took advantage of them - but then again, he also met their needs (regardless of his intentions.)
The government's overzealous prosecution against pain medication is a far greater moral wrong than anything this guy ever did. It's true that such drugs can be abused, but innocent people should not be told they must keep suffering just because of the foolish actions of a few drug abusers.
The real problem is that there is a demand for online pharmacies from otherwise law-abiding, good citizens who are just trying to escape from pain. If you disagree, try being in pain for three months like I was, screaming and crying and unable to sleep, and yet denied medication. You'll quickly change your view.
I think the inquiring about a hit man and asking someone to take photos of a cooperating witness' children is probably what really did him in. Witness tampering and death threats should mean a long sentence in the big house.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
The "paperwork" would have consisted of a letter from your bankruptcy attorney to the bank giving your bankruptcy case number (I usually include a courtesy copy of the first page of the filed petition) and citing 11 U.S.C. 362. Faxing the letter usually results in the account being released within an hour or two, at least in my experience and IAAL. I don't even charge extra for this but YMMV.
Fuck them. Good for you for speaking your mind. People seem to have forgot the whole reform idea. If you put someone into a place where the only protection they have is packs and violence then what will you get when they come out? And what about the people in prison for crimes they didn't commit? We all know it happens. Or for things like the drug laws where local and federal laws are misaligned?
There are some crimes I don't condone and people I personally wouldn't like to see re-integrated back into society (rapists, sociopaths who murder). But there are a lot of people who make mistakes and should be allowed to return to society after serving their time.
Quack, quack.
Now if the AMA would get off their asses and start cracking down on these spammers practicing medicine without either a license or that all so powerfull MD/OD that allows them to prescribe, we'd start putting many of them spammers either into prison or bankruptcy for malpractice. The final effort should be to clean up their damn ranks and start defrocking the idiots who've found it's easier to make a buck with limited risk for malpractice by writing prescriptions for people they've never seen. Hell hold them legally liable for any injury their malpractice causes.
On a closing note, so long as the pharmacy is properly licensed in the state it's based in (be it online or brick&mortar) then I have no issues with a legitimate sale so long as there is a fully legal perscription written by a real doctor. It can certainly be cheaper for long-term meds then the local RiteAid/Walgreens/Walmart while allowing to reallocate inventory space to medications that are used short term such as Antibiotics/antifungals and such.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Also, of course, after being convicted but before being sentenced, he tried to stash some of money where the Feds couldn't get it, which is not the brightest way to get the judge to take it easy on you.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks